View full sizeBRUCE GEISELMAN/SUN NEWSService Department crews are cleaning up brush around the city.

BAY VILLAGE - Life this week is returning to normal for residents who recently went for as long as six days without power.

The majority of residents had electric service restored by Saturday, and by the end of Sunday, the number of homes without power had dropped to about 200. As of Tuesday afternoon, all but about five customers had electric service, according to FirstEnergy Corp.’s website.

At the height of the outage last week, which occurred when Superstorm Sandy plowed through town Oct. 29, more than 5,400 residents, or 85 percent of the city, were without electric service. In addition, trees, limbs, utility poles and transformers crashed to the ground all over. Many east-west roads were closed for much of the week, including Osborn, Lake, West Oviatt, West Oakland, Douglas and Forestview.

“It was the worst damage I have seen since growing up here,” Mayor Deborah Sutherland said. “It was very, very devastating.”

Fifty trees came down on public roads and 150 to 200 trees were toppled on private property. Most of the trees that came down on roads took down power lines, and many of the fallen trees on private property did the same, according to the mayor.

The city at this point has no estimate of the costs associated with the storm. However, it put on extra workers in the service, police and fire departments, the mayor said.

“We had over 70 emergency calls and runs for the fire department,” Sutherland said, referring to the height of the storm Monday night and early Tuesday. “That was regarding trees down, wires down, poles down and cracked, and transformers exploding.”

Sutherland described looking outside during the storm and seeing what appeared to be lightning. She later learned the flashes were transformers blowing out all over town.

“I would really like to recognize our fire department, our police department, our service department, because they did an absolutely fantastic job in securing the city in a very life-threatening situation,” Sutherland said. “Luckily, none of our employees were hurt. None of our residents were hurt. But we had some significant property damage.”

Trees came down on homes, and winds and rain damaged buildings, including most city buildings.

Service Department workers have been using backhoes and trucks to load and haul away the debris.

While residents reported some basement flooding, the problems stemmed from sump pumps failing to run during the power outage rather than a problem with the city’s sewers, Sutherland said.

Police Chief David Wright commended his officers, giving special recognition to auxiliary officers, most of whom are Bay Village residents. The auxiliary officers were called in to work long hours keeping the public safe from downed power lines and directing traffic. They performed those duties despite storm-related problems at their own homes and the need to work their normal jobs.

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